


Drink So Hard

by ruric



Category: Rubicon
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: Written for paian's 2010 prompt: Rubicon, Tanya MacGaffin, she drank so hard the bottle ached (Beth Hart, L.A. Song)
Collections: fic_promptly Fills 2010





	Drink So Hard

**Author's Note:**

> Written for paian's 2010 prompt: Rubicon, Tanya MacGaffin, she drank so hard the bottle ached (Beth Hart, L.A. Song)

Tanya had spent her life turning nothing into something. She'd clawed her way through school, bucking the odds stacked against her; a one parent family where her mom worked all hours to hold it together and keep a roof over their heads. The sympathetic glances her teachers sent her bounced off, because they didn't know the reality. Any spare money her mom made went on books and trips to museums and art galleries – Tanya's mom didn't dress her in new clothes but she did fill her mind with possibilities.

The full ride scholarship she got meant the financial pressure eased but her drive to succeed grew. For the first time she felt like she was in an environment where anything was possible and she let herself dream. It was easy to focus on her studies, her professors pushed her and she sailed through her degree confident she'd found the one thing that made sense in her life. 

Analysis was all about probability and possibilities – and she'd been raised on what was possible. It was a curious blend of logic and intuition and she was good it at. It paid off the day she graduated and looked out to see her mom's smiling face in the crowd.

Her degree led to a graduate programme. Her dissertation, supported by her professors and challenged by her peers, she negotiated into a book deal. It took all of her time and she hadn't been home in a year but her mom understood: Tanya was building an academic reputation brick by brick. 

Her mother passed away two months before she graduated. Tanya took a good look at her life and decided she wanted _more_. More _what_ she didn't know, so perhaps it was fortunate the API came calling.

She's been in the job six months and all those probabilities and possibilities she used to read so easily when they were theoretical? Now she feels like she's drowning in them. Oh sure she can still read them – but the consequences of reading them right and reading them _wrong_ aren't theoretical numbers on a page. 

She's see what happens when they make a decision. She's heard the call being made, listened to the static ridden recordings of a plane flying low to deliver a bomb or a troop carrier moving in. She's heard the excitement and fear in the voices even through the static. The burned out buildings and the bodies – they're on her as much as on the men and women who're out in the field thousands of miles away. 

Sometimes she doesn't think it matters whether the decision they make is right or wrong – the bodies still mount up on both sides. Most of the time she doesn't even know if there is a right or wrong anymore – it's all shade of grey. The only way she can stop the nightmares and stop her hands shaking when she leaves through the next stack of documents Will shoves in front of her is to drink so hard the bottle aches.


End file.
